Apologies for the spam (as a lousy way to introduce myself to the list)- I sent a long reply to this yesterday (with a better introduction), and did the whole "yes you can archive my email" approvals thing, and it seems to have vanished into the ether. Testing to see if the list will let me post now before I go to the trouble of writing it all up again.

Some housekeeping – I’ve made a number of tweaks to the comics and periodicals schema based on feedback from a number of industry resources (including comics.org anda large number ofdigital andbrick-and-mortarretailers). I’m waiting on feedback from a number of other sources (including Diamond Comics) and I’m going to start reaching out to non-USsites and
publishers.All changes to theWiki entryare tracked in the discussion page.

There seems to be a recurring question about identifiers that keeps coming up. For example, I included the distributor code (the Diamond Comics code, which is used byUS books) as one of the identifiers for comic issues and graphic novels. I could see a role for the internal ID used by publishers– theMarvel ID is used by a lot of our digital retailers as a unique identifier and I’m sure other publishers do the same. Comics.org suggested that the schema add their local ID as an element (it’s used by a number of other sites and they have as comprehensive a list of books as anyone).

Basically, between publishers,distributors and fan sites,whatis the best practice around identifiers?

Whatqualifies asubiquitousenoughto be included as an identifier ina schema such as this one? Is it better toinclude more (with fewer actually used) or fewer (but more frequently populated)?

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